A spatial light modulator (SLM) using liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) is well known in the art. When a voltage is applied to a pixel electrode, liquid crystal molecules in the LCoS rotate into an orientation orthogonal to the substrate, modifying the phase modulation amount of incident light. A higher frame rate than that in LCoS display applications is required to produce a high-performance LCoS spatial light modulator.
In one such LCoS display device, the display area of the display device is divided into a plurality of smaller regions and portions of images in adjacent regions along a borderline dividing the regions are displayed simultaneously (see Patent Reference 1, for example). A method has also been proposed for a simple matrix type liquid crystal display device by which the display area is divided into a plurality of regions and pixels in each region are driven simultaneously to reduce power consumption of the liquid crystal display device (see Patent Reference 2, for example). Another proposed matrix type liquid crystal display device divides the display area at arbitrary positions (see Patent Reference 3, for example).    Patent Reference 1: Japanese patent application publication No. 2005-189758    Patent Reference 2: Japanese patent application publication No. 2001-356744    Patent Reference 3: Japanese Patent No. 3722371